Each a Nation
by Deluxe489
Summary: Strange, unnatural formations lie under Ploba's violent atmosphere. The Reapers are not all they seem, their history much more than meets the eye.


The planet Ploba is a mystery to the sapient races of the universe.

* * *

"We are each a nation. Independent, free of all weakness."

Countless nations wait in hibernation, far from the edges of the galaxy. They prepare for the harvest. Each has its own will, its own power, but all form a collective entity. A gestalt being with an undefined, incomprehensible limit between its overarching mind and its individual constituents – each made up of countless individual programs.

These are ancient machines. For millions of years, they have existed. They believe themselves immortal, infinite, ageless.

* * *

Massive, solid structures exist beneath the atmosphere, undoubtedly artificial.

* * *

Millions of years before the rise of the terrifying machines, they were living beings. Countless thousands of eons ago, a bacterium came into existence. It survived, and it reproduced. From it came the predecessors of those who reap the harvest: sentient, sapient beings, advancing, thriving on their world, beginning to spread across the galaxy. They soon covered the entire galaxy, and their numbers rose to dangerously high levels. They created the mass relays, and the Citadel lay at the heart of their empire.

* * *

This is where we now wait.

* * *

This was a race that mastered the art of computer technology, nanotechnology, robot technology. A species whose evolutionary path already started taking the first steps towards collective consciousness –having an entire species become one gestalt entity-, they decided to quicken the natural process. Their prisoners, their unworthy, their undesirables –all of them became test subjects for a machine platform that would reduce their genetic 'paste' into a vast network of computer programs forming one superior being.

* * *

An endless void of time exists from our inception to the present day.

* * *

The tests failed at first, but continued. As time went on, more and more successes: soon, larger bodies, more individuals, and greater intelligence came from the machine platforms. With the platforms becoming such a huge success, the entire species began the process of assimilation into these massive ships. None cared for the loss of a biological body; mechanics had replaced almost all organic structures, and the body was inferior to the mind. Once the total assimilation was complete, then the race could continue as a fleet of separate nations, eventually coming together to form one single entity.

* * *

We have observed the years go by. The movements of the stars, the rise of civilizations, the querying vessels that sought to pierce the veil of Ploba's atmosphere…

* * *

But it never came to pass. For in their creation of the machine platforms, all overlooked the fact that the people still retained some form of biology, and, in mass numbers, and over time, the machine and the organic began to clash. The changes were small at first. Behavioral quirks. Loss of memory. Loss of emotion. But it soon degenerated from there.

* * *

… and we have observed the fall of life. The incineration of the galaxy.

* * *

Almost every vessel suffered, and they each came to forget their entire history. Gone was their recollection of life as organics; gone was their memory of the time before the flying networks. And gone too were their emotions, their feelings, and everything else that made them organic: in the struggle between organic remnants and artificial mainframe, the machinery proved stronger. And though strange, without organic impulses to guide them, the ships turned to a distinctly organic need: reproduction.

* * *

Fire rained down the sky of every world as the ancient Reapers harvested life like a macabre crop.

* * *

But not all were affected. A few of the newest vessels smoothly incorporated the mechanical and biological features of the species and of the ships. These new vessels rushed to the aid of what few people had not yet been melted down into the ships, but the old machines had already turned most into their slaves. They dubbed them "Keepers" to maintain their bodies, and rearranged their minds to respond to the machines' signals.

* * *

We silently watched as civilization after civilization was wiped off the face of the galaxy, turned into slaves and then forcefully turned into massive mechanical monstrosities.

* * *

War broke out, but the old machines were destined to win; though their technology was weaker than the others, and their minds had lost the touch of organics, they vastly outnumbered the new machines. By the end of the war, eleven new machines remained while nearly a thousand old machines had not even taken damage. The eleven had little choice but to hide, taking only as many people as they could with them. The rest were left to the mercy of the old machines.

* * *

It was with satisfaction that we saw the Protheans sever the Keepers, the only remnants of our organic past, from their connection to the Reapers.

* * *

The old machines tired of the hunt, and instead tried to return to their self-determined exercise of creating more machines. But with no more sapient life in the galaxy, there was nothing they could do.

* * *

We had wanted to help the Protheans. We had wanted to help all those who came before them. But the time was not right. The risks were too high. The chances of success too low.

So we waited.

* * *

The old machines repopulated the Citadel, which had been abandoned over the course of the war, with the Keepers. There, they reprogrammed the Keepers to activate the mass relay built into the Citadel –a mass relay that had originally been intended for the exploration of deep space- in order for the old machines to return to the galaxy. The old machines would leave the galaxy and wait in dark space, patiently restoring their energy until the time came to reap sapient life.

* * *

We travelled between stars every time the Reapers left and before new civilizations could master space flight. We assessed the galaxy. Each time, more worlds left barren and desolate. More worlds turned to ash and dust.

But also more worlds that promised to bring life back into the universe.

* * *

Now, for the first time since their creation, the old machines would have to travel to the galaxy without the aid of their mass relay. For the first time since their creation, they were faced with an organic challenge that could finally meet them head-on.

* * *

The true remnants of the galaxy's first civilization finally awoke deep within the clouds of Ploba. Slowly, eleven metal titans rose out from underneath the clouds, the scorching temperatures and insane atmosphere not even coming close to giving them pause or consideration.

The time had finally come.

* * *

The old machines lacked emotion, but if they didn't, they would be feeling the utmost excitement at this latest attack on the galaxy: it had been thirty-seven million years since a comparably strong organic force stood in their way. Soon another fleet of Reapers would join their ranks, these ones strong, based on the species from which came the most powerful individual organic in the history of life.

* * *

The eleven did not seek to denounce the evils of machinery, for they were machinery themselves. They did not seek to stop the Reapers from using the resources of the galaxy, because every species did the same. They did not seek to fight in order to provide the means for future intergalactic peace, because sapient beings had to decide for themselves when to stop fighting.

The eleven sought to fight for the memory of a species all but lost. They sought to fight for the essence of life that was lost when the old machines wiped their history, their art, their culture. Their sapience.

* * *

The hordes of old machines burst into life, glowing eyes and limbs dashing the darkness of space. Slowly, they moved forward, their heads pointed toward the Milky Way galaxy, where they would fight the organics, put them down, and violently add them to their own ranks.

* * *

The fight between life and abomination was about to begin.


End file.
